Latest / Blind Guys Chat / #151: Boomer Shooters!

Transcript

#151: Boomer Shooters! · Blind Guys Chat

• 0:11
  Welcome to Blind Guy's Chat, where Oren O'Neill—
• 0:16
  Hello!
• 0:17
  Jan Bloem—
• 0:18
  Hello!
• 0:19
  And Mohammed Lashir—
• 0:20
  Hi there!
• 0:21
  Talk about the A to Z of life.
• 0:30
  Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and you're very welcome to episode 151. Now, this week's show is all about video games, so I'm gonna hand over to Mohamed to do the intros.
• 0:41
  All right, ladies and gentlemen, normally Oren does this and he does this much better than I do, but today you get me, so it will be all right, it'll be all right, you'll all survive. And then next time you'll get Oren's nice introductions. Today we have with us a superstar, a YouTuber, a influencer, because we too— Is it Messi? No, it's not Messi. We too need to, we too need to move into the modern age and, you know, start interviewing influencers. So instead of Messi today, we have Jesse, Jesse Anderson from the Illegally Sided YouTube channel.
• 1:15
  American footballer, right?
• 1:16
  And an American football fan, at least. I don't know if he, I don't know if he performs the sport himself, maybe on the computer. Oh yeah, but, uh, welcome Jesse, and you are here because recently we got a couple of questions about gaming, and that happens to be something you know everything about because that's what you make your content about. So welcome.
• 1:37
  All right, well, thank you for inviting me.
• 1:38
  Could I just clarify something? Did Mo say illegally sighted?
• 1:42
  Yes. So, so, um, so the way that— well, no, the way that came up, it's, uh, it's kind of a term, you know, you've heard the term legally blind.
• 1:55
  Yeah.
• 1:55
  So if I'm legally blind, then I must be illegally sighted. It was one of those things where everyone who has a disability kind of knows that when somebody first meets you, what's the first thing that they ask you? What, what can you see? What can you not see? Tell me about your vision. And I don't mind answering those questions, but it kind of got a little boring. Like, oh, this is what I see, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so just to kind of mess with them a little bit when you start out, it's like, oh, What is your vision like? When I say, well, I'm illegally sighted, and they— you can just hear them pause a little bit as they kind of work it out. And then I'm like— and so when I was trying to think of a name for the channel, I'm like, you know, this illegally sighted thing, that could work. And then that's just kind of become my thing. So that's how that happened.
• 2:44
  Now that shows also, Jesse, that we are not one of your listeners, you know, or we don't follow you. So, so we— you are totally new for us. What kind of gaming do you do, or what What does your channel look like?
• 2:57
  I don't do YouTube full-time at all. I have a full-time job. I work for the state as an assistive technology specialist by day in Minnesota here. And then outside of that, I do a lot of different things. So not only do I do the YouTube channel stuff, but I'm part of the Microsoft Low Vision Advisory Board and part of I do, uh, working with some XR groups for virtual and augmented reality accessibility. Uh, I do a little bit of, uh, game and technology, uh, advocacy and consulting work. Um, so, you know, working with mobile app developers, indie game developers, a few AAA developers on occasion, you know, not a lot, but, you know, periodically. Um, so I kind of dabble in a little bit of everything.
• 3:46
  Where does your interest in gaming begin?
• 3:49
  I have been a gamer ever since the Atari 2600 days way back when, because I'm getting kind of old, you know. And so like, it was just really cool, you know, when I found out that I saw an Atari and it's like you could, you could control things on the screen, you know, instead of just watching TV, you could control what's on the screen. Um, but then it was when I, when I saw the original Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES, that's when I really got hooked, you know, Super Mario Brothers and all that kind of stuff.
• 4:23
  Uh-huh.
• 4:24
  And then in the, uh, I would say that like the early '90s is when I started really getting into PC gaming. And when I saw things like, um, Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, um, that's when I really started getting hooked on, uh, PC gaming. And I've kind of loved first-person shooters ever since.
• 4:44
  I hated FPSs because I couldn't quite see well enough to be good enough at them to make them entertaining. Every now and then I'd like shoot someone, uh, by accident. I'd be like, yes, I'm the best in the world! And then I'd die again and I'd be like, oh, I guess, I guess I'm not.
• 5:00
  Okay. And then were shooting games then, then in those days a favorite for you guys in that because you could easily do it, or was Because I, I played sometimes also racing games when I could see a little bit better.
• 5:14
  Yeah, I mean, I play, like I said, I play a little bit of everything. I like some racing games, um, you know, platformers, puzzle games, um, but especially like your kind of what they call boomer shooters these days. You know, there's a lot of different types of shooters. Um, you have your kind of more modern military style, you know, your Battlefield, Call of Duty stuff. I'm not really into those as much because those are a little bit harder for me to play because, you know, you're kind of in these war scenarios and a lot of those are team-based games. And so by the time I figure out if it's a teammate or, or, uh, an enemy, I'm likely dead. Um, so the older games, you know, I play a lot more single player and I play like, if I play shooters, I like them more like I said, Doom, Quake, um, those types of games, because they were even single player, they were, they're really fun. Uh, and then they, for multiplayer, was more of like a free-for-all, if it moves, shoot it kind of a thing.
• 6:15
  And, and what, what system do you use? Do you use the Xbox or the PlayStation, or what, what do you have? A diff— yeah, different one?
• 6:24
  I have—
• 6:26
  you've got them all?
• 6:27
  Everything?
• 6:27
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:28
  I mean, I, I, for the work, for some of the work that I do, uh, and, and the covering stuff that I do Um, I do have most of the modern systems. I have a PlayStation 5, I have an Xbox Series S, um, and then I, I do most of my stuff on PC though, just because it's a lot easier to record and work with things that way. And the other, the other advantage I think that PC has in modern times is like, you know, you have a lot more options for accessibility. So, you know, maybe there's text on the screen, like you can have something like NVDA running in the background and do OCR, or I can turn Windows Magnifier on.
• 7:09
  So you like— you prefer the Windows environment since you then can make use of the other accessibility tools that you have in that way?
• 7:17
  Um, yeah, I mean, sometimes I don't use any extra tools, but, you know, sometimes I will. And the other thing that you can do with Windows, and it's actually becoming a lot more popular in the last couple of years, Um, there's a lot more people that are making mods for games. So let's say a game comes out and, you know, it's not natively, let's say, blind or low vision accessible. It's not very accessible. Third-party developers, you know, just like you would do like, uh, JAWS scripting or NVDA add-ons, um, you know, somebody can make a mod for a game, um, to add accessibility features to it. So there's been, like I said, especially in the last oh, 6 months to a year or so, there's been this huge explosion of blind and low vision users that are vibe coding these mods for a lot of different, all kinds of different types of games. So many that I can't even keep up with it. One of my favorite mods that I've been working with, even currently, is helping out a team for, again, I mentioned the old school shooters, you know, Doom and Wolfenstein and all those things. Um, the original Doom has a mod called the Toby Accessibility Mod, and, uh, we're just about to release version 10.0 of that here, hopefully sometime in July. And that is making a lot of the original Doom games accessible to blind players. And, uh, it's actually really cool.
• 8:52
  Is that because of demand?
• 8:54
  You would get a few mods early on. There weren't quite as many. Um, like the Toby mod, that one came about because, uh, somebody had made a documentary about this guy named Toby Ott, and it, you know, it kind of showed how he liked to play games but they weren't really accessible. So he would play Doom with all the cheat codes on because that's the only way that he was able to really play it. And one of the— a cheat code.
• 9:20
  A cheat?
• 9:22
  What is that code?
• 9:23
  It's a code that allows you to cheat.
• 9:26
  So you can, so you can like you can be invincible or give yourself infinite ammo or, okay, or, you know, clip through walls, that kind of a thing.
• 9:35
  Yeah, yeah, like Harry Potter walks through the door or, you know.
• 9:40
  Yeah, pretty much.
• 9:41
  Yeah, yeah. Okay.
• 9:42
  Yeah, one of the developers, or somebody who makes mods for just, you know, your average sighted Doom players, uh, he saw this, um, documentary for you know, about this Toby guy. And, uh, he's like, I, I bet I could make something that would, you know, that would actually make Doom playable for blind players. And so he started kind of tinkering with that, and I learned about it, like I said, way back, um, you know, right around 2019 or so.
• 10:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:14
  And I reached out to the developer, and so I've kind of been helping with ideas and beta testing and and all kinds of stuff, uh, for the past several years. And, uh, there's been other mods, you know, like, um, Stardew Valley, which is this kind of, uh, life simulation, kind of like peaceful kind of farming. Uh, it's hard to explain, but it's kind of like this, um, you know, like you, you inherit this farm and you have to build it up and you get to know the community and everything. And so there's been a mod for that. But then, like I said, is As this kind of AI vibe coding thing has become more popular in recent months and more capable, there's just been, you know, because there's so few mainstream games that are, let's say, blind accessible, that, you know, somebody will just say, I really wanna play this game, or I really wanna play this type of game. And so somebody will try to vibe code it.
• 11:11
  You can actually choose what, what game you want to play in a way. You're not limited.
• 11:16
  It's definitely gotten a lot better, uh, over the last several years. I would say about 2015 is when accessibility really kind of just started to become a thing in the game industry. People kind of started to take notice, and you had a lot of smaller indie developers kind of taking interest in maybe adding accessibility to their games because, you know, you don't have— like, for the big AAA, the big budget titles, you have so much, so many layers and bureaucracy that it's like, you know, if you wanted to try to invest in accessibility, you know, can you get that through? Whereas an, if an indie game, you know, being developed by a couple of people says, this is, we, this is what we want to prioritize.
• 12:01
  Yeah.
• 12:02
  Uh, it's easier for them to do so. I would say around 2020 is when the AAA industry really kind of got a Um, kind of took interest because you may have heard of a little game called The Last of Us Part II.
• 12:19
  No, sorry.
• 12:21
  Well, so The Last of Us Part II is a PlayStation game, um, and I had played the first one visually. The first Last of Us came out in like 2013. And then The Last of Us Part II came out in 2020, and like a few weeks before the title was released, um, the developer had posted a blog entry and they just kind of blew open like, oh, by the way, we are having over like 60 different accessibility features for all kinds of players.
• 13:01
  Oh.
• 13:01
  And so this is like in a like a big, like an action kind of a post-apocalypse type of thing. Um, and you know, it's— they're not— they don't call them zombies. They're— but they're— it's kind of like a zombie type of outbreak. And, um, but no, this is a full game that people, uh, you can play with low vision, no vision.
• 13:28
  Oh.
• 13:28
  It was the first real AAA game that, uh, that I think a lot of blind players could play independently.
• 13:36
  This one was a sensation.
• 13:39
  And what, what was the main interest then out of this game developer that they were, uh, that they did it? Was— did they have some relationship within our community, or was it, uh, yeah, what was the reason?
• 13:53
  Well, I mean, again, it's kind of it I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I know like they used to, they made this other series before The Last of Us. They made this, uh, series called Uncharted. Uncharted is kind of like, uh, think like an Indiana Jones type of adventure.
• 14:13
  Hmm.
• 14:14
  And so they were making this series and they were kind of dabbling in accessibility, but not, you know, super deep, you know, deep into it. And then, um, I think some of the people had met with, uh, or they had seen a presentation, um, by Brandon Cole, if you've heard of him. Uh, unfortunately we lost him a couple of years ago.
• 14:40
  Hmm.
• 14:41
  Um, but he was a huge, uh, he, he was a huge kind of person in the game accessibility field and he helped do a lot of the consulting in The Last of Us and a few other games that came after. like Mortal Kombat 1 and Forza Motorsport. Um, so those are a couple of other big AAA games that are very blind accessible. Um, but yeah, so, you know, after they kind of started talking to people with different disabilities and like, well, let's try to prioritize this and let's just go for it. And they did, and they did one heck of a job.
• 15:20
  Can you just explain to me, for instance, because I was talking to Mo, and I were talking about this, and I was saying, well, when I had vision, I remember Call of Duty, for example, and I remember playing that when I had some vision, and I was trying to figure out, well, how would it sound, or how would you play something like that, like a shoot-'em-up game, or—
• 15:47
  Yeah.
• 15:48
  a racing game like Formula 1 or something like that. How does that transfer into it to be— to being played when you're completely blind? Like, what, what's the feedback? What are you getting from the console, from the screen, from the speakers?
• 16:03
  So in a shooter game, whether it's third person or first person, you know, first person, you're behind the gun. Third person is more like you're kind of looking over the shoulder. Uh, of somebody. Um, those games— so I'll just kind of go by sort of what The Last of Us does. Um, so there are a lot of extra audio cues. Um, so as you're walking through the environment and you're going towards your next objective, I can, let's say, click the right, the, the right thumbstick, and it'll play this little audio ping sound.
• 16:40
  Uh-huh.
• 16:41
  And it'll, it'll basically point you in the direction of your objective. So you walk a little ways, you can hit the button again. And so that will help you. Um, you know, you can walk around the full 3D environment and you'll hear other audio cues like, oh, okay, in this pathway is blocked. So I'm gonna have to crawl up on this truck, go onto the roof, jump down through a skylight. And go through this, you know, cut through this building. So you'll hear different audio cues to say, oh, okay, this is where you have to jump up, this is where you have to maybe crouch under something or go prone. Um, for combat, you would have other audio cues. You know, you'll hear the enemies just naturally in the environment, but then you can— they have a ping system, so If I'm standing there, I can ping for like an enemy and I'll hear a sound like, oh, there's an enemy over to my left, there's an enemy to my right. And let's say when I'm close enough, if I want to do like a stealth melee kill where I come up behind him and go, you know, just take him down, um, right, you know, you'll hear a tone to say, oh, you're within range. So if you hit the stealth attack button, boom, you can take them out. Um, and same thing with shooting. So when you're into shooting, when you're aiming, when you're aiming and you're actually locked on, or when you're targeting an enemy, you'll hear like a targeting beep so that you know.
• 18:11
  Is it then also what, what I remember out of this, um, uh, what is this Air Force games, you know, the—
• 18:20
  Right, right, exactly. Yeah, it's kind of a similar type of concept. Yep. Okay, to answer your question about racing games, Oh yeah. Um, Forza Motorsport. So what they did, they added this whole— it's amazing what they did. So Forza is a full simulation racing game, um, and you know, they have some assists. They have like steering and driver assist that you can turn on or off or kind of adjust how much of those you want. And those are assist features that everybody can play with. They've had those for years. But when Forza Motorsport came out a couple of years ago, they added this Blind Driver's Assist. So basically what they do is, again, there are audio cues. So you're— let's say you're driving and you're coming up to a right curve, and you'll hear kind of an announcer to say, you know, right 3 or right 6. It'll kind of tell you, kind of like think about rally racing where you have a co-pilot navigator.
• 19:22
  Yeah.
• 19:22
  And it's telling you the severity of the turn. And then on top of that, you're hearing audio, like different beeps. So when you're going into the corner, let's say you're coming in too hot, you're coming in too fast, you'll hear a tone that says, okay, you're gonna have to slow down a little bit, otherwise you're gonna spin out around the corner.
• 19:41
  But is it not so complicated, Jesse, when you're driving fast with 300 kilometers per hour or whatever is it in miles? You know, those audio cues and so on, are they not too, too late?
• 19:54
  Yeah, is there not a sensory overload? That's what I'm worried about.
• 19:57
  To be fair, so the one thing, like Forza Motorsport, yes, there is absolutely a learning curve to it, but in addition to hearing the sounds, you have like a sound glossary that you can listen to so you can learn what the sounds are ahead of time. And you're also given the opportunity to adjust, as you said, like, oh, am I going to react in time?
• 20:23
  Yeah.
• 20:23
  If you think that— if you think that you're not going to react in time, you can literally adjust how, how much before you hit that corner are they going to let you know. Like, if you're really comfortable with the car, you may not need as much advance warning, but if you're a new player, maybe you want a little bit more Advance warning before you hit that turn.
• 20:46
  And is that then for all different circuits? For example, when you look at the Formula One, we followed it a little bit more in the recent years with Max Verstappen. So in Zandvoort you have the Tarzan curve, etc. But for each certain circuit and for each curve you have all those Special auto cues, etc.
• 21:12
  Basically, you know, it doesn't matter what track or what course you're on. You'll have cues for as you come into a turn and as you sort of exit a turn. And again, your co-pilot kind of tells you, oh, this is a, you know, this is, this is a, you know, it's a, um, like a six. So it's maybe it's a really light.
• 21:32
  So you have a co-pilot who is, who is, uh, uh, driving with you when you're in, in for, in, in for Mule One.
• 21:40
  Just talking.
• 21:42
  Think about like, you know, so you—
• 21:44
  oh, I mean, think about that.
• 21:45
  If I have it right, think about like rally racing.
• 21:49
  Oh yeah, rally racing. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I got you.
• 21:52
  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. 2 right, 4 left.
• 21:58
  Okay, okay, okay.
• 21:59
  And the thing is, all of these, uh, all of these games I've done videos for, you know, the Doom stuff, uh, Forza The Last of Us, um, Mortal Kombat.
• 22:11
  All on your channel? All on your channel?
• 22:13
  Yeah. When you say you've done— just to clarify what you're— what you mean you've done them, are you talking about you have— you're guiding people through how to play that game, uh, if they're using— if they're blind or visually impaired?
• 22:26
  So what I do, a lot of the, the way that I do videos, um, I call them spotlights. So I have different types of videos on my channel. I have low vision spotlight videos, which are games that I can play with my remaining vision. And so I evaluate them and kind of, uh, give people an overview. It's not like a full review necessarily, um, but I kind of let, you know, I, I kind of tell people what my experience is and just show me playing a little bit of the game so that low vision users can make up their mind of like, oh, I think this might be something I could play.
• 23:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:01
  I have accessible game spotlight videos. So I have different playlists for iOS accessible game spotlight or PC accessible game spotlight or, um, you know, PlayStation, Xbox. And so when you hear the accessible game spotlight, then you know those are games that are playable by blind players.
• 23:24
  And what do you acquire? That is, when I go for a PC, um, a game You only need to have your PC, yeah, Windows PC, and then you, uh, do you need to have an account then also, or, or first of all you need to have those games first, you need to purchase those games, or you have—
• 23:43
  Well, yeah, yeah, you would have to purchase the games. Um, there are digital storefronts like Steam or GOG, like good old— they call you— they used to call them Good Old Games, but they kind of shortened it to GOG.
• 23:56
  Okay, okay.
• 23:56
  Um, those are the 2 primary Uh, Steam or GOG? Steam, it's semi-accessible.
• 24:04
  Steam is a very poorly written website. It's doable, it's just annoying.
• 24:08
  No, it's clunky. You can do it on the— you can use the website and it'd be easier than you can do the client itself.
• 24:15
  Yeah, but the client itself is also doable, it's just annoying. That's it. It's, it's very clunky.
• 24:20
  Yeah, I cheat and use magnification because I can.
• 24:23
  Mo, may I ask a big Because Jesse may not be aware of the EAA. Is Steam, are they, is that a big company? I mean, is that, would they fall inside, would they fall inside the EAA?
• 24:36
  So Valve is a monster of a company, um, and they may well fall inside the EAA. Um, I've seen a lot of software companies make accessibility a priority after the EAA. I have to be honest, I've not used Steam in a little while, so they may They may actually have been, have been updating their accessibility and it may have become slightly better.
• 25:00
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:01
  But Steam was under the ADA as well. And they have not done anything about accessibility because of the ADA. So Steam is notoriously difficult to handle.
• 25:10
  What I can tell you in recent months about Steam is Valve is the, the company that makes Steam, as you said. And, Within the last year or so, because of the EAA and other requirements and things around June of last year, uh, June of 2025, um, a lot of companies really started adding at least a base. It's not, it's far from perfect in a lot of cases.
• 25:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 25:37
  Um, but they've started adding like native screen readers and native accessibility features because in June of last year alone, Literally, um, the Nintendo Switch 2 was released and that had a basic screen reader in it. Um, the Valve Steam Deck, which is kind of like a handheld PC, kind of like a Nintendo Switch, um, that actually has a native screen reader built into it. And on when you're using Steam on the PC, what they're currently recommending, I think they're working on making the Steam, the main Steam interface more accessible. But what they're recommending is if you go to— if you enable Big Picture mode in Steam, which is like when you hook— it's, it's— the mode is meant to be like when you hook your computer up to a TV, so you have more like a TV set-top box interface instead of a computery style interface. But if you switch to this Big Picture mode Your Windows screen readers are supposed to handle that a little better.
• 26:42
  Maybe I'm, maybe I'm gonna try that.
• 26:44
  Yeah, okay.
• 26:46
  So, so that is, uh, uh, this is then an environment, but do you need to have only your keyboard, uh, to play the game?
• 26:54
  Some games you can control with the keyboard, some I use keyboard and mouse, and some games I use, uh, some games I use a controller for.
• 27:05
  Do you have also already, uh, games who use a Braille display?
• 27:09
  So some games that are blind accessible, they are self-voicing, so they have their own menu narration or their own kind of way of doing text-to-speech. But some games will also natively support, um, you know, like Windows screen readers, be it JAWS, Narrator, NVDA, whatever. And if you are using, you know, if you're using NVDA or Narrator or JAWS Um, as long as, you know, if, if you also have, um, the screen reader working with a Braille display, that same spoken content should also be put out to the display. If you're in need, if you're having a screen reader as the thing that's reading your game aloud.
• 27:57
  Where would somebody start if they've never played? Again, before, but also, how would you know if a particular game that they're interested in is accessible?
• 28:11
  Well, again, that's also sort of a complicated question because, so as far as like your mainstream games, whether for PC or consoles like Xbox, PlayStation, um, some developers Will get the word out ahead of time. So if you follow, you know, whether it's you follow game companies on social media, or if you follow other advocates or consultants or disabled players, you might find out through them. Sometimes a company will, you know, again, they'll make a blog post or they'll make some sort of a YouTube video announcement like Uh, was it like late May of this year? I think it was, or early June. Uh, one of the developers of an upcoming Mar— there's, there's a Marvel Wolverine game coming out for the PlayStation 5 in September.
• 29:10
  Ooh.
• 29:10
  And already in, uh, like I said, late May, early June, they did this kind of big post where they announced all the accessibility features that are going to be coming to that game. And so it got a lot of people excited.
• 29:24
  Yeah.
• 29:25
  But there's, the problem is there's just as many, most games you're lucky to hear if or what accessibility features they have either shortly before launch or even at launch, you'd kind of, somebody might be offered a review code and then they can review it, or you'll just have to buy a game and see if it works. Social media is really helpful for this type of thing. Um, you know, I don't do a lot. Like, I, I still do, I still do Twitter because I had, you know, I've gotten so many opportunities through Twitter. I've done the Blue Sky thing a little bit, but, um, you know, things like that, following companies, other creators and things like that. And then there's, you know, there's things like audiogames.net. They'll have posts or, you know, they'll, they'll keep track or like for mobile games, you have stuff like AppleVis.
• 30:18
  Yep.
• 30:19
  If there's a new iOS game that's accessible. Um, so, you know, there's websites, there's, and then if you go to, um, more of these game companies, like more of these platform makers like Xbox and PlayStation, they're starting to have, you know, you can go to, let's say the, you know, you can go to your web browser and go to the Xbox Um, website and you can kind of look for games and you can kind of filter, you know, you just like how you could filter by genre like racing or shooter or puzzle. Um, they've started introducing accessibility tags. So it's like, oh, I want to find out if a game has a screen reader. I want to know if it has navigation assist or whatever. Um, and then of course, I believe Steam has that too. Yep, Steam does as well. Yep, they're starting to do that too. And, um, there's also other websites, um, you know, there's things like Can I Play That? There's, um, oh God, there's, there's like a half a dozen of these things out there now. Um, I have them bookmarked. Um, but there, you know, there's all these websites that are, that are, you know, geared toward letting people know Uh, if and what accessibility features a game would have, especially on iOS. There's, you know, there's Dice World and now Card World. Uh, I've actually gotten quite hooked on Card World as of recently. I've been playing against, uh, a lot of people with that. You know, they've got a few different games in the Card World, like they've got, uh, Gin Rummy, Rummy 500, and now Hearts.
• 31:58
  Mo, and you Have played— well, you're playing games, I suppose, a little, a lot more than Mo. Are you getting the same satisfaction, do you think, from playing it now with low vision or blindness as you would have got when you had full sight?
• 32:17
  Well, for me, I've been legally blind all my life, so all the same vision that I've had now, I've pretty much had all my life. So I'm, you know, I'm thankful to have the vision that I do have. Um, and I can, I can kind of see well enough to, you know, like a lot of games I can see pretty well to play. I can't read small print very well, which is where I use magnification or screen readers a lot. Um, and also things where like if, if there's enemy, like enemies in a distance or not much contrast between like foreground and background.
• 32:53
  Hmm.
• 32:54
  that can be difficult, um, especially games that would have a lot of, you know, user interface stuff, a lot of reading, uh, are games that I would traditionally avoid. So I would avoid a lot of like Japanese role-playing games like your Final Fantasies and those types of things because it was just endless reading and stats and menuing around. But in recent years now, they've, they've kind of, um, There's been some role-playing games that, uh, that have started, you know, supporting text-to-speech or menu narration, or even things like Diablo, which is kind of an action role-playing game.
• 33:34
  Okay.
• 33:34
  Where now they've— they're supporting text-to-speech in Diablo 4.
• 33:39
  And so— I might try it. Good.
• 33:41
  Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Diablo 4. Um, that's another game I really want to get back into. Um, you still do— they still don't quite have full navigation in the dungeons, um, but they've added a little bit of nav assist for the, for the overworld and a little bit in the dungeons. But like, for me, the main problem was you're constantly picking up loot— new weapons, new armor, new gems, new whatever. And so reading all of that stuff visually was so tedious, if not impossible.
• 34:14
  Yeah.
• 34:15
  But now that that stuff is narrated, um, I, I kind of tell people that, you know, I can use my text-to-speech to go through all this, you know, inventory and, uh, you know, all these— okay, all that kind of stuff. And then I can save my vision for actually playing that, you know, playing the game.
• 34:32
  Is Fortnite also accessible, Jesse?
• 34:35
  Not really that I know of. Um, I very briefly looked at it. Um, it's not a game that I'm hugely interested in?
• 34:43
  No, my son is, so that's why, well, you know, I like to beat him once.
• 34:48
  I don't— oh, absolutely. Um, I don't know that there's any mod for Fortnite as of yet.
• 34:57
  I'm not aware of it either.
• 35:00
  Okay, okay.
• 35:01
  Um, so I, I— yeah, maybe something will change there. Yeah, for me, or to answer your question, because I do think it's It's important for many people who have lost their vision, and I'm one of them. So it's important that if you start doing something, and this is actually advice that is generally applicable when you lose your vision, don't go chasing the same highs is what I would say.
• 35:27
  Right.
• 35:28
  You will never have the same experience as back when you could see. That just does not exist. But that doesn't mean that there aren't good experiences out there. And that doesn't also mean that there aren't good experiences out there that are comparable to back when you could see. Just let go of the urge, and I know it's a very strong urge, but let go of the urge to compare and contrast, right? Back when I heard the explosion and I could also see it, you know, because it had a bigger impact. No, if you manage to suspend that particular part of your brain Where you constantly go back to the past and try to compare and contrast. Because remember, with sight loss, there's also a lot of psychological like pain that comes up, right? It doesn't necessarily hurt physically. Maybe in some cases it does, but it doesn't always. And that means like if you feel sad and bad about losing your vision, you're naturally going to elevate your experiences from back when you could. see. And so that will always feel better to you. And I think there's some of that trap there. So let go of that. Let go of your comparison of when you could still see.
• 36:43
  Okay.
• 36:43
  Try to find experiences that are compelling to you, and I guarantee you, you will find them. And I guarantee you, you will have fun, and you can get hooked on a game for hours and hours. I know Jesse— this is 2 years ago— recommended a game called Dawncaster, which is on an iPhone. Yes, it's not the most complicated card game out there, but it is fun to play. And I, I whiled away hours on that thing. And you know, it's not the same as, you know, back when I could see and I was playing, oh, what with Tekken 4 or Tekken 3. But it doesn't need to be the same. I just— all I need is to have fun. That's what I need. And if I have fun, then I win.
• 37:22
  I really like that perspective of it. And speaking of Tekken, um, that fighting games are one genre that, um, has largely kind of been accessible to blind players even since like the '90s. Now you would have to do some menu, uh, menu memorization to get to the options you wanted, but by the nature of, you know, let's say Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or Tekken you, you know, you have a character on the left, you have a character on the right, and as long as you have good, uh, panning stereo audio, uh, I know many, many blind players who have played, uh, fighting games over the years. I remember in the, in the, you know, the mid-'90s, a friend of mine who was totally blind, uh, he had all the, he had all the like fatalities of— we were playing Mortal Kombat 2 and he was teaching me all the fatalities because he had them all memorized already.
• 38:20
  Hmm.
• 38:20
  Uh, when we rented, uh, rented the game. But yeah, I mean, the There are— there's literally a blind and low vision fighting game tournament that happens every couple of years or so. It's called the Sento Showdown.
• 38:34
  We need to play a game with the 3 of us, or at least, yeah, do something.
• 38:40
  What could you recommend, Jesse?
• 38:42
  Yeah, we need to do something.
• 38:44
  Fighting games are probably your best bet. Um, like I said, uh, Mortal Kombat 1 is, I would say, the most accessible game. Um, that's available on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC. It's on the Switch as well, but I don't think that one, because of the way that the Switch 1 was anyway, I don't remember if that actually had— that version had some of the accessibility in it because of some of those platform limitations.
• 39:14
  Hmm.
• 39:15
  Um, but fighting games are a good place to start if you want to do multiplayer. Like I said, Forza has a heck of a learning curve to it. Um, yeah, you know, but that's complicated, I think. But what's cool about it though is, yes, there's a learning curve, but you know, it's a learning curve for a sighted player too. I mean, because it's, you know, it's not an arcadey style racing game, it's a simulation racing game. But as a blind person If you learn these systems, you can literally go online and play competitively with sighted racers. That's what's cool about it.
• 39:50
  I want to kill them all, you know.
• 39:52
  Hey, I no, I hear you, man. I'm I'm an action gamer myself.
• 39:58
  Like, I I like it's getting late here after after scaring our guests.
• 40:05
  Jan is now scaring our listeners.
• 40:07
  Yeah. Oh yeah. Sorry, guys. Oh la la.
• 40:12
  No, no problem.
• 40:13
  Yeah.
• 40:14
  But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, like I said, especially on iOS, there's a lot of like, uh, games that you can like, there's some dice games, there's some, um, there's some card games. You know, if you've heard of RS Games, you can play them on mobile or on the web. RS Games, they have, um, a whole bunch of different kind of board and card games that you can, that you can play against, uh, you know, AI bots or against live players.
• 40:41
  You know what I wanna do at some point is actually see if I can use one of those tools, Codex Cloud Code, to play something like Civilization, because I've always been interested in Civilization and I've never seen well enough to play that game.
• 40:56
  Um, that is a game that there is— there are so many menus and dialog boxes and whole bunch of just craziness. That is a game that I won't even touch as a low vision player.
• 41:09
  You've had enough of this Civilization, you want to try another Civilization.
• 41:13
  I mean, I mean, look where we're going, and I don't even have dialogues and menus to fix it.
• 41:18
  Yeah, well, at first I, at first I almost thought you were asking about like real-world civilization, how crazy things are, but we wouldn't even touch that right now.
• 41:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so Jesse, tell us, give us some, uh, information about how to find your, your channel and, uh, Yeah, it's amazing.
• 41:39
  Learn more.
• 41:40
  Overwhelming.
• 41:41
  Sure. Well, um, yeah, I would say the main places you can find me these days, like I said, you— I'm on YouTube. That's my primary platform. I release videos a few times a week typically. Uh, you can find me at youtube.com/IllegallySighted. You can also go to illegallysighted.com, and that's S-I-G-H-T-E-D. Uh, illegallycited.com. It has links to my YouTube channel and some of the other projects I've working on, or that I've been, you know, that I've worked on, some of, uh, you know, past presentations and podcasts I've been on. So everything that's not like the YouTube stuff, you'll find a lot there. And then you can follow me on social media. Like I said, you can, um, follow me on Twitter Where I'm or Twitter slash X, whatever you want to call it these days. I refuse to call it X, but you can follow me on Twitter at BGFH79, and you can look me up on Blue Sky at Illegally Cited. And those are probably the places to find me.
• 42:48
  Yeah, super fantastic. Well, listen, thanks for taking the time to record with us, and you've given us sure information.
• 42:54
  We're gonna there's so much. I didn't even touch on a fraction of it.
• 42:58
  There's No, but I think this is not the last time you will be on our show, or, or I hope, uh, uh, you won't mind to come again, you know, because it's fair enough. Yeah, we will, uh, you need to guide us because of course we have Mo in our team, you know, but, uh, uh, Oren and me, we, we rely upon your guidings, you know.
• 43:19
  Yeah, they don't listen to me. Nah, they only listen when other people—
• 43:23
  oh, that's scary. I don't know if you're listening to If you're following me, that, that's a scary prospect.
• 43:30
  We like to do scary process, that's no worries. No, but many thanks for your guiding and, and your opening up this new world for, uh, at least for, yeah, for me. And that's, uh, I think for a lot of listeners, Oren. And Mo, thanks for bringing on, uh, Jesse. Well done. Thanks very much.
• 43:49
  Yeah, it's almost like I co-host this podcast.
• 43:54
  Almost. Yeah. Many thanks.
• 43:57
  Thank you.
• 43:59
  Thank you for inviting me.
• 44:00
  Thank you very much, Jesse. That's great insightful information. Jan and I will definitely have to try a few video games to see how we get on. But that's it for this week's show, ladies and gentlemen. And don't forget, we'll be back in 2 weeks' time. And the email address if you want to get in contact is blindgamer@blindgamer.com. guyschat@gmail.com.
• 44:21
  Okay, bye!
• 44:22
  Bye!